Over the years, bathrooms have evolved from rooms that simply provide a utilitarian function, to rooms that provide places of refuge from the everyday stresses of life. As a result of improved fixture designs appearing in newer and renovated bathrooms, people are encouraged to spend time relaxing in such bathrooms. For example, many bathrooms now include an oversized soaking bathtub or water-jet bathtub. Many bathrooms also include elaborate, marble and glass shower stalls having multiple shower heads or spray jets, and sophisticated “vessel bowl” bathroom sinks.
Unfortunately, the bathroom toilet has not benefited from such design improvements. In fact, recent improvements to the traditional two-piece round toilet and the more modern one-piece elongated toilet have primarily been limited to aesthetic enhancements such as the addition of decorative enameled flowers and the like.
A small number of functional toilet improvements have been disclosed, however these disclosed improvements have not been widely accepted. Such improvements include, for example, the addition of a heated toilet seat as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,895, or the addition of a toilet seat positioning assembly where the toilet seat can be either raised or lowered via an electric drive assembly that includes a foot pedal, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,539,557.